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Controlling Fear, Part 1;
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Fear is an emotion that we have to learn to deal with when working with young horses. The horse and rider will often communicate anxiety, or even outright fear, to each other. While fear is an important "attention getting" emotion, it can get in the way of learning. The handler must realize that the horse uses fear to protect himself in his wild environment. One horse in the group senses danger and they all immediately become alert and ready to flee. In fact the flight in itself can be an exhilarating experience for the horse, reinforcing "spook and run" behavior. Fear is something which a vervous rider can easily convey to a horse. Just about anyone who has been around horses for very long recognises this. What many people don't realize is that horses can teach humans how to master fear. Prey animals can't spend their entire lives in terror, so they have to be able to manage this emotion. We can learn from them in this regard. Our first priority was to make sure Dan would be all right. We cut away the flap
of meat, cleaned, dressed and wrapped the wound, and established that he could still
walk out sound. Next we welded the wagon tongue back together and repaired the
wagon.
We needed to get Dan back to the wagon and working again, not leave him to mull over a terrifying and painful experience. We hitched the team together, ground drove them a short while, and as shown in the photo on the left, both Prince and Dan backed compentently to the wagon, separated by the wagon tongue. Some key points here include the handlers not getting emotionally caught up in the accident. As soon as we established that Dan was not seriously injured, we set about solving the problems and stayed emotionally "neutral" and supportive. We backed up to an point in the day's training where everything worked fine and restored the "normal routine". We approached the wagon with the horses as if there was nothing to fear. (We didn't want Dan to associate the wagon with anxiety.) In this event we managed fear, letting it heighten our levels of awareness, keeping both horses and humans alert and attentive, but we didn't allow it to grow to the point that we couldn't perform effectively. More to follow...For related information, see "Staying a Kick Away".Press "Back" to return to the page that brought you hereGo to Case Study SectionReturn to Training SectionReturn to Wild Horse MentorsReturn to KBR World of Wild Horses and BurrosGo To KBR Horse NetKBR Horse Training Information, © 1997
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